Archives for category: Library News

Ok. So, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything. The fact is, I’ve been learning the ropes at the Ottawa Public Library – in between training and meetings, I get to do some actual work. What work? Well, as an Integrated Library Systems Librarian, I get to bang literal and metaphorical wrenches against the largely metaphorical pipes that keep information flowing around the library.

I’ve latched onto the metaphor of being something like a Victorian steam engineer, working away in a gritty bunker trying to keep this big ol’information mill spinning. Without all the Steampunkish insinuations, it is a cool enough idea. Never mind that I cross through a children’s library to get to the office where my desk is…

Anyways, I’ve been remiss in following up on some posts I’ve half-started. So, in the interest of clearing my slate, here’s a run-down.

1.  The New Surrey BC Main Library looks like a space base. Cool.

2. A paper released by the Public Lending Right Commission gives the  state of affairs vis-a-vis eBooks in Canada. It’s a bit watery, but the point is things have to change for eBooks to remain viable for public libraries (duh…).

3.  A cool graffiti taxonomy archive.

4. Author Lev Grossman declares himself to be crochety about eBooks via the New York Times. Nice art with the article, though.

 

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford: giver of cuts or promises of cuts or promises of cuts then paying more.

The Toronto Public Library (Canada’s largest library system) has recently been threatened with cuts. Having already seen one branch take a hit, the city’s library workers and supporters are taking a hard line. In brash awesomeness, they’ve issued a warning to city councillors looking to wield a heavy knife.

The Toronto Public Library Workers Union has a message for city councillors: If you want to keep your seat, support your local libraries.

Results of a survey commissioned by the union and released Wednesday found that half of Toronto residents said it would affect their vote “a great deal” if they knew a candidate had supported closing a library branch.

The survey sends “very clear” message, union president Maureen O’Reilly said. Of more than 1,000 respondents, about three-quarters said they disagreed with closing branches to save money. The library board recently approved a $184 million budget that led to a decision to close the Metro Hall branch. “We have no reason to believe this trend won’t continue,” O’Reilly said, adding that shutting branches adversely affects seniors and kids.[source]

The numbers seem to be in the TPL’s favour:

This message emerges from a Forum Research poll conducted on July 4, 2011 which found that three-quarters of Toronto residents disagree with the idea of closing local library branches as a way of solving the city’s deficit (74%), and more than one half disagree “strongly” (54%). When it is their own local branch which is threatened, the proportion of those who “strongly disagree” increases to two-thirds (64%).

Not only are library branch closures off the table as far as Toronto residents are concerned, more than half disagree with privatizing the delivery of any city services (55%), and more than one third disagree “strongly” (38%). When the Toronto Public Library is mentioned as a privatization target, seven-in-ten Torontonians disagree (71%), more than one half “strongly” (55%).[source]

Hopefully, this sort of information will make the budget hounds think twice.

Torontonians can take action by contacting their city councillors and/or by signing the online petition.

The database I work with was down for a bit this morning, so I had little bit of time to peruse the ALA’s new Confronting the Future: Strategic Visions for the 21st Century Public Library.

I am intrigued by their notion of the Four Dimensions (see the illustration above).  Besides being awesomely impossible to graph on a  2D chart, it’s a decent representation of the winds driving library evolution right now.

It’s also about strategic decision making. There is a certain amount of push-and-pull embedded in the 4D concept. A move on one spectrum will impact a library’s a place on one of the others.  Can a “Creation” driven library also function well with an “Archive” and “Individual” focus?

The suggestion being:  public libraries must choose what they want to be good at, since they cannot be good at everything. Read the rest of this entry »

In Canada, Windsor Ontario has been one of the cities hardest hit by the economic downturn, and despite earnest efforts by creative and forward thinking residents, times are still tough.

The city has been  making news this week because the hard pressed Catholic School Board is pretty much gutting its school libraries.

Here’s Windsor-Essex District Catholic School Board director of education Paul Picard’s brainstorm:

His “lightning moment,” he said, came when he was sipping a tea at a Starbucks and observed a student next to him working a laptop, an iPod and her cellphone as she completed an assignment. “She said, ‘This is how I learn,’” said Picard, who concluded the board must move to where its students are. The new library — the board calls it a learning commons area — won’t be hush-hush quiet, he said. “It’s a much more boisterous hub, much like you would see at a student centre at the university,” with wireless connections and a teacher (a library technician isn’t a teacher, so can’t fulfil that role, he said) helping them with research and digital literacy. “That’s their world, that’s where we have to meet them,” Picard said.

Meanwhile, elementary school libraries will become “flex rooms” with computers, he suggested, while the board tries to put 1,000 books in each classroom to foster literacy. Responding to studies that link school libraries to improved student literacy, he said you can find studies that validate anything, and there is “extensive” research that backs putting more books in classrooms.[source]

That sounds nice. More education policy should be based on this “Hey, it works for Starbucks” method. Perhaps, the school board could also charge for books and play corporate tie-in music over the PA.

But seriously, Picard’s vision looks like an effort to glamourize something more dire. A recent Globe and Mail editorial points this out:

At two high schools overseen by the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board, a grand total of three books was checked out last month. That depressing fact is cited by Paul Picard, the board’s director of education, as one reason for a radical change now under way, changing libraries from book-centred and quiet places to noisy digital hubs…

The main reason, though, is that the board faces a loss of 800 to 1,000 students in September, and a budget shortfall of about $10-million. Cutting most of its “learning commons specialists” (technologists, not teacher-librarians) will save $2½-million a year. In their stead, visiting literacy specialists will provide much more useful advice, Mr. Picard says.[source]

Hard times, indeed. In response, Windsor area high-school students have protested and the Catholic School Board is trying(poorly) to calm things down. The furor may die down, but this could be a budding trend. This is worrisome.

This policy is a little ham-fisted with regard to Ontario education policy which has long supported libraries. The Ontario School Library Association has publicly pointed to research that argues against Picard’s outlook. But the Catholic School Board in Windsor has already shown itself unready to consult widely on such a dramatic move in policy. It’s also shameful that the school board chose to try to coat these cuts in a thin veneer of coffee-house-learning-commons-ism.

Librarians and library techs are already laid off. Elementary schools libraries have been closed and the books distributed to classrooms. Hopefully, it can be turned around. Though right now, it looks like another strike for a town struggling against a “Worst Town in Canada” rap.

From Gizmodo:

Gone is the frustration of not finding the book that the system swears is exactly where you are looking. Gone is the having to sneak through dark corners of stacks and walk all over the library to find a single tome. However, also gone are the serendipitous encounters with texts surrounding the one you were looking for, guiding your research and interests in new directions.
Which is a shame, for sure. But even then, maybe you can still make your way to that fortuitous find but in a whole new way. And without that librarian glowering at you. [University of Chicago Libraries via Geekosystem, Big Think]

OK, let’s put aside the regressive librarian stereotyping and look at what they’re showing us. It seems like a pretty complex and expensive solution. When it breaks, how catastrophic is it to services? I don’t know if this is something will necessarily take off except as a show piece.

I’d say it’s a little analogous to the infamous Zip drive. The Zip drive was an OK innovation that ended up being a huge waste of money for people who bought one and then immediately had to abandon them for the CD-R/W drives – which were way more flexible for data storage.  I think elaborate robot libraries will probably lose out to eLibraries made up mostly of eBooks, online journals, etc. The tipping point will be when when eReaders improve in flexibility, quality and price (as they will, inevitably).

Also, it is easy to say this sort of set up would render librarians obsolete. But really, it’ll be the clerks and pages who would be replaced – likely by a crew of oil stained, retro-engineer types (like below) . Think about it, the look of the thing reminds me of Babbage’s Difference Engine. In such a case, steampunk fans would be happy.

I made promises to win. Please hold me to them.

 

The election is over in Canada. Depending on where you stand, the results are a mixed bag. Personally, I think it was one of the more interesting (a real roller coaster ride) election nights I’ve experienced. Good on 61% of Canada for voting. It’s a slight improvement. But, we can do better.

During the Election, the CLA raised some issues that affect the LIS profession at the federal level, such as Internet access, net neutrality, and the digital economy. So, how does a Conservative victory affect these? The affable Michael Geist offers some insights.

A majority may pave the way for opening up the Canadian telecom market, which would be a welcome change. The Conservatives have focused consistently on improving Canadian competition and opening the market is the right place to start to address both Internet access (including UBB) and wireless services. The Conservatives have a chance to jump on some other issues such as following through on the digital economy strategy and ending the Election Act rules that resulted in the Twitter ban last night. They are also solidly against a number of really bad proposals – an iPod tax, new regulation of Internet video providers such as Netflix – and their majority government should put an end to those issues for the foreseeable future.

On copyright and privacy, it is more of a mixed bag.

The copyright bill is – as I described at its introduction last June – flawed but fixable. I realize that it may be reintroduced unchanged (the Wikileaks cables are not encouraging), but with the strength of a majority, there is also the strength to modify some of the provisions including the digital lock rules. Clement spoke regularly about the willingness to consider amendments and the Conservative MPs on the Bill C-32 committee were very strong. If the U.S. has exceptions for unlocking DVDs and a full fair use provision, surely Canada can too…

While there will undoubtedly be wins and losses, the majority offers the opportunity to move away from years of policies driven by politics where little actually becomes law to one driven by policy that results in true legal reform. Given the last seven years of minority Liberal and Conservative governments that achieved so little on digital policies, the chance to get something done probably represents the biggest change of all.[read the full post]

I have an intense desire to be cautiously optimistic (one should not give way to dismay), but that optimism will be fettered to our readiness as citizens and professionals to hold the new government accountable on the issues that matter to libraries and to the people that rely on us.

Canada’s 41st election started out sort of dull and predictable (c.f. the lack-lustre debates). But, the recent news about the NDP’s surge has made things pretty darn interesting. I’ve been glued to the polls and news reports.  (This is my way of saying:  I’m too distracted to keep up the pace I set on this site, right now. Regular posts will resume next week.)

I’ve been looking around for ways Canadian libraries have supported voter engagement and turnout. Libraries across the country have put up information tables, dug out history and contemporary politics books for displays,  and posted information and links online.

Is there more the library community can do than displays and links? What about cultivating the next generation of young voters? Are there election themed story-times out there? Are we engaging new Canadians in their new home’s politics?

The LIS community should be thinking of ways to help create and nurture engaged political communities. They’ll come in handy when libraries need protection from book banners and budget hawks. This will take more than just blog posts and Bristol board displays during election season. But, the results could be huge!

Libraries are political (but not necessarily partisan). History has shown how access to books and information (not to mention community space and communication tools) are powerful political tools. To ignore this is to ignore the important role libraries have had and can have in the direction of our nation and our world.

We have to play a role in shaping the future, if we want to have a role to play in the future.

Canada Votes May 2nd!!!

***Find out More***

Party websites:
www.liberal.ca
www.conservative.ca
www.blocquebecois.org
www.ndp.ca
www.greenparty.ca

CBC’s Reality Check on Platform Promises

Register to Vote:
www.elections.ca

Apathy is Boring

Stephen Harper & cat, Cheddar

I’ll state up front: the Conservative Party is not my favourite, not by a long shot. But in the interest of fairness, I’ll put up their platform points on the internet and copyright:

In spring 2011, the Conservatives will announce and begin implementing a Digital Economy Strategy, focused on the following five priorities:
* Building world-class digital infrastructure;
* Encouraging businesses to adopt digital technologies;
* Supporting digital skills development;
* Fostering the growth of Canadian companies supplying digital technologies to global markets; and
* Creating made-in-Canada content across all platforms, to bring Canada to the world.[source: CLA platform analysis]

This reads pretty much like the other parties. But, given the CPC’s six years in power, you can bet the primary beneficiaries will be large corporations. And, there will be a wanton lack of transparency, accessibility, and probably unrestrained rising costs that tax payers will have to pay (cf. the F-35 fiasco or the pork barrel spending around the G8/G20).

But wait, there’s more: “A Stephen Harper-led majority Government will also reintroduce and
pass the Copyright Modernization Act, a key pillar in our commitment to make Canada a leader in the global digital economy.”[source] That sounds nice. If this is anything like Bill C-32, it will not be a great boon for librarians already pinched by tight DRM rules and licence agreements.

In my opinion,  I can’t imagine a party whose attitude and behaviour are so far removed from those at the core of Librarianship: fairness, access, transparency, generally being nice and helpful, etc. etc.

***Find out More***

Party websites:
www.liberal.ca
www.conservative.ca
www.blocquebecois.org
www.ndp.ca
www.greenparty.ca

Register to Vote:
www.elections.ca

Apathy is Boring

May at a whistle stop.

May and her Green Party have pluck, you have to give them that.  As a new party, there are a lot of issues about which they need to get the word out. Still, their platform has a few planks that relate to libraries and library related things:

*Ensure that copyright policy allows students to properly conduct and create research in a manner that is consistent with a thriving information commons, fair dealing principles, and moral rights.
* Ensure network neutrality by supporting the principles of fair use, consumer information privacy, communications market competition, and rationalization of the statutory damages provision.
* Recognize that access to high-speed internet connections is now a critical aspect of infrastructure and work to expand access to address the digital divide.[source: CLA platform analysis]

The Green Party is also a vocal supporter of Vote for the Internet and Open Media, an organization that strives to “make media and telecommunications more transparent, with broader and more representative public participation. Our job is to shine a spotlight on key media policy developments, and provide essential tools and information for citizen engagement.”[source]

May’s comment on the subject: “The internet is critical for modern day citizen engagement and an integral part of our economic competitiveness. The Greens pledge to adhere to OpenMedia’s Stop the Meter campaign on Internet access. We are committed to enhancing broadband access, competition, transparency and choice.”[source]

In this area, I think the Greens, bless their hearts, have more optimism than specifics. This comes with being a new voice on the national stage. But, they are a rising alternative.

***Find out More***

Party websites:
www.liberal.ca
www.conservative.ca
www.blocquebecois.org
www.ndp.ca
www.greenparty.ca

Register to Vote:
www.elections.ca

Apathy is Boring

Dapper Jack Wants to Broaden the Bands

A week ago or so,  the Canadian Library Association put out a press release detailing the Liberal party’s platform as it relates to Libraryland in Canada.

In the interest of equal time, I have for you what the NDP has to say about the key issues affecting libraries this election.  (I’ll be posting the Greens and the CPC later this week – if I can find an English translation of the BQ platform, I’ll post it too).

5.14 Ensuring all Canadians Have Access to Broadband and a Robust Digital Economy

* We will apply the proceeds from the advanced wireless spectrum auction to ensure all Canadians, no matter where they live, will have quality high-speed broadband internet access;
* We will expect the major internet carriers to contribute financially to this goal;
* We will rescind the 2006 Conservative industry-oriented directive to the CRTC and direct the regulator to stand up for the public interest, not just the major telecommunications companies;
* We will enshrine “net neutrality” in law, end price gouging and “net throttling,” with clear rules for Internet Service Providers (ISPs), enforced by the CRTC;
* We will prohibit all forms of usage-based billing (UBB) by Internet Service Providers (ISPs);
* We will introduce a bill on copyright reform to ensure that Canada complies with its international treaty obligations, while balancing consumers’ and creators’ rights.[source]

Not bad, though a little vague on copyright.

Aside from the overall “hard on corporations” tone the NDP likes, I don’t see how this platform is substantially different than the Liberals.

Maybe the tone is the difference. Some issues the Libs touch on in their platform, like Open Government, aren’t in the NDP’s because I’m pretty sure they are part of the general way the NDP would run the show if they won.

***Find out More***

Party websites:
www.liberal.ca
www.conservative.ca
www.blocquebecois.org
www.ndp.ca
www.greenparty.ca

Register to Vote:
www.elections.ca

Apathy is Boring